Interviews From The Gaming World

Over the past few years I have conducted a few different interviews with some industry types.  Here are the links to those I have done so far.

The most recent was a brief interview with Carlos B. Garcia, the man behind Anima Studios and the Anima raft of games (including Anima Tactics; click for link to interview). He recently launched the Anima Gate of Memories: Extended Campaign on Kickstarter, as a supplement to the original Anima: Gate of Memories Kickstarter campaign.
As the Anima Gate of Memories: Extended Campaign heads into its final days, Carlos kindly agreed to answer some questions posed by the Anima Tactician (click for link to interview).

I have also conducted a few interviews with creators and developers working on the Pulp City game and on behalf of Pulp Monsters.

Maciej Żylewicz (part 1 and part 2) - the driving force behind Pulp Monsters and Pulp City.

Melvin de Voor - artist, concept designer, layouts and design.

James Van Schaik - sculptor, industry veteran and consultant.

Blasted Terrace & Ruined Fountain

Blasted Terrace

The Blasted Terrace and Ruined Fountain by Gale Force Nine are ready to play straight out of the box. Both can act as centre-piece type scenery in of themselves, but equally both should substitute well for hills, having the right kind of profile to achieve that.

The Blasted Terrace (BB556) was a birthday gift from my best mate and frequent gaming buddy Rob, and a cool addition to the array of scenery I have. I see it as functioning like any typical medium size hill in most games, having a nice profile to block line of sight for human size models.

Ruined Fountain

I bought the Ruined Fountain (BB553) for myself as an extra option and variation. The footprint would make it a small to medium size hill equivalent.

Like the rest of the Battlefield in a Box range they are solidly designed and cast, and neatly painted. The Ruined Fountain has the bonus of the water feature of course. I think that GF9's attention to quality is very good.

In my opinion, based on quality and usefulness, I think they are fine value at around £18-20 GBP.

As with the recent Terrain series of posts, the figures used for scale are:
- Crimson Oni (Pulp City)
- Azriel (Anima Tactics)
- Red Skull (What The? Miniatures)

Mage Knight Castle: Keep

I saw this only recently for the first time, and I thought it was an ideal extra for my burgeoning terrain collection. An OOP piece for the defunct (or is it?) Mage Knight game, and part of the Mage Knight Castle range, there were various sets that went with this Keep. This can be picked up from Ebay for around £20-25 GBP based on some recent listings. I have heard of much better bargain prices if you look around.

There is a click dial with opening on the roof which I decided to fill-in with green stuff and paint over. My painting did not match the original pre-paint style, but it will do. I also painted over the slots where I *think* the walls would connect, to make them look a bit more like arrow slits.

In all a nice little piece that becomes war-gaming friendly with a minimum of fuss and work.

Figures used for scale:
- Crimson Oni (Pulp City)
- Azriel (Anima Tactics)
- Red Skull (What The? Miniatures)

Ziterdes Terrain

Watchtower Ruin 'Nalog'; 12009

I have had these pieces for a while now, so thought it was high time to post a few considerations.

I like pre-painted terrain as it frees up time for painting minis (which I am slow enough at, without adding more terrain painting to the mix). I have been amassing a number of bits and pieces and most fall into the category of hard-foam or some kind of resin material. Minis are Pulp City, Anima Tactics and a not-Red Skull for scale reference.

These Ziterdes items are the hard-foam type and feature typical pros and cons.

The pros:
Lightweight
Durable enough for gaming
Easy to modify with sawing (apparently!)

The cons:
Air bubbles - pretty much every hard foam piece I have has this problem
The finish - arguably inferior to what Gale Force Nine does (click for some examples of GF9 terrain I have posted about)

Not sure about this one; OOP piece I think

Price wise I find Ziterdes and Gale Force Nine competitive with each other, even though they don't produce identical pieces by any stretch. The Nalog Ruin is around £30-35 GBP. The second piece is currently OOP I think.

I like the solidity of the material Gale Force Nine uses, which means when it comes to a choice, I will likely go with that over hard-foam alternatives. But despite that, there is some nice stuff out there that can be useful for the time-strapped gamer.

Clayface

Clayface is my second Batman Miniatures Game model completed, and right now I am just painting what I feel like for the game rather than having a view to what I may play with. My main reason is that not yet having played the game, and not yet having a physical rule-book to dive into, I will just build up a small collection of models over the next year or so and see where my painting takes me.

That may make me sound like a Luddite, but I honestly prefer physical hard-copy rule-books to electronic versions, and if I am going to invest my time to game with something, I want to have that in hard-copy. That's just the way I roll, as 'the kids' might say. If Knight Models release hard copy core rules I will buy them; until then I am not too sure that I will game with the minis.

So no BMG gaming imminently on the horizon for me, but as I said I will continue to add more characters to my personal line-up. Right now I have over 30 more BMG/DC Universe/Marvel Universe minis to paint from the Knight Models ranges, so plenty to work on, and inevitably a long-term project.

On the mini itself, let me say that it is a big chunk of metal. While the pricing for the human-size minis for the BMG/DC Universe/Marvel Universe lines is relatively high compared to other skirmish games, I think the big pieces are excellent value given their size, bulk, and weight. Pain in the backside to photograph though!

The metal for this felt better (in other words less soft) when prepping the mini than for the earlier sculpts I have got ready for painting, which is a good thing. The base supplied was a 40 mm which I think was silly. I have kept the model to a 40 mm base simply because I don't want to fudge the game rules for it, but with the mini design, a 50 mm base would have been preferable, because the mini has a tendency to tip towards that outstretched hand. There have been a few minis recently that I feel companies have supplied with 'too small' official bases. Of course I can base them how I like, but as a gamer, I want the bases to be 'game legal' so it is something that bugs me. To my mind, it is about the space the mini occupies on the tabletop; if the bulk of a model so substantively overhangs a base to make getting other models into contact tricky, or if the model is not naturally stable on the base size supplied, then I feel it probably needs to be on a bigger base.

On another note, astute observers may have spotted that I have added 'pages' for the few skirmish games that this blog covers, so just to highlight  little bit more redesign may occur in the next few weeks and months.

Quarter 1 2014 Painting Summary

This was something I did last year, so I can see no reason not to do so again, since I feel it helped me get more models done than the year before. The summary represents my painting across all three of my minis blogs.

While I don't expect to exceed last year's total, I still think it can help motivate me, so here we go with the first quarterly summary for 2014.

In January and March combined, I managed 10 minis; February saw no painting at all.

Top row (l to r); click names for links to posts:

• Type-020: Verrier (Anima Tactics)
• Wildman (Pulp City)
• XII (Anima Tactics)
• Ahriman, Lord of Darkness (Anima Tactics)
• Rayne (Anima Tactics)

Bottom row:

• Arkham (Anima Tactics)
• Primate of Science (Pulp City)
• Kira (Anima Tactics)
• Targeteer (Reaper Chronoscope)
• Type-004: Hellhound/Hellhound (Anima Tactics)

Supersystem 4th edition Kickstarter

Scott Pyle has launched his Kickstarter project for Supersystem 4th edition, which can be found by clicking he graphic.

I just wanted to draw attention to this project. :)